


Dearly Beloved

by Imperium



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Bingo Prompt Fill - "Everything is just Peachy", Civil War: Casualties of War (Marvel), Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt Tony Stark, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 22:14:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20553527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imperium/pseuds/Imperium
Summary: Tony had given him a home, it was only right that he was the one to take it away.(Or)Steve has all the feels when he beats Tony up in the mansion.





	Dearly Beloved

The undersuit clings to Tony like second skin, bright gold and ostensibly flashy - It’s so very Tony and so very much not human. It shifts like the scales of a snake - which...  _ Fit _ ; Steve supposed. 

Tony pulls the hood off, letting his hair fall back - messy, dirty, and black as night. He's turned facing away from Steve, but Steve could still see him wringing his hands; a nervous tick he seemed to have acquired in the time after he had decided to throw away everything in his life that mattered. His head was bowed, and in spite of Steve asking him to take his armour off, hoping  _ praying _ he’d sense  _ Tony _ in there somewhere, cause for all his panache - he’d always been frighteningly easy to read, easy,  _ always  _ for Steve - but now, now, he gives nothing away.

Or maybe the two of them just didn’t operate the way they always had; on the same angles and lengths - making up for each others’ flaws.

Of course, Extremis enhanced Tony Stark  _ had  _ no flaws. So Steve had nothing to make up for.

Only hours ago, Steve had placed an EMP in his hand - held it for a moment as the shock had run through his body - the cruel  _ cruel  _ satisfaction of finally being one step ahead of Tony Stark’s magnificent intellect. 

Wasn’t that something they would have balked at… once? Captain America and Iron Man, Winghead and Shellhead, Tony and Steve - orbiting so closely around each other that at some point they’d stopped  _ being  _ Tony and Steve and become TonyandSteve and that’s just the way things  _ were _ .

And here Steve had been thinking that none of this was personal. 

He walks as he tries to collect his thoughts. Crunching tile, and broken cutlery on the ground.

The air is cloying - thick with brick dust and mortar. It feels like some kind of ancient palace, or, better yet, a tomb - Once filled with pomp and splendour, tapestries lining the walls, golden and sure, ornate furniture crafted in the lifetime of ancient kings all in preparation for this  _ one  _ moment. But the mansion had none of that - a small broken photograph for a tapestry and the only thing golden was Tony - and he was bent out of shape. 

Gold always had been malleable. Didn’t  _ everyone  _ know that?

Tony’s shoulders shake - 

He is crying. Well,  _ of course _ he is crying. Most of the time, Steve is sure that crying over the things he’s lost is what Tony does  _ best-  _ and now he’s walking forward, and Steve does not want Tony anywhere  _ near  _ him - but Tony takes his hands in his own - slender fingers feeling  _ fragile  _ on Steve’s skin as he rubs at Steve’s bicep. They’d done this so many times; He and Tony - whenever Steve felt particularly worried or  _ vulnerable _ , they’d retreat as they always did to the roof and Tony would rub Steve’s biceps with his fingers - just like this. 

That was a  _ Steve and Tony _ thing. Something that  _ they  _ did.

Steve does not want to share that with this machine. The golden touch is cold - and Steve can almost feel the residual shocks from the EMP run through him - setting his nerves afire. 

_ Did it hurt?  _ He wants to ask. _ Did it hurt you? It hurt me. I wish it hurt you as much as it hurts me. _

This close to Steve, Tony’s eyes are impossibly blue, there are harsh hollows under his cheekbones beneath thin skin that looks all too pale. He mustn't have had time to sunbathe with all the time he spent hiding behind his armour. 

Even after everything, he's so exhaustingly beautiful it  _ aches _

“Tell me what to do” Tony asks - beseeches,  _ begs _ , and Steve… he has absolutely no idea. 

“Join me” he says instead, uselessly. Tony is already shaking his head. Face wet, and grieved. Perpetually the martyred hero. He probably even feels  _ sorry  _ that he cannot join Steve. Not that Steve puts much stock in Tony feeling anything at all these days. 

He vaguely remembers telling Tony once that he'd had a lot in common with the villains they'd fought - he hadn't meant it then, but he knew,  _ he knew  _ where it would hurt - and Steve very rarely pulled his punches - and there he goes! The genius strategist - but now, it may even be true - Steve knew whom Tony was getting in bed with, and Tony honestly and genuinely believed with that naive optimistic faith that he’d always accused Steve of being victim of - that the moment Steve surrendered, he and everyone else, would  _ not  _ be packed off to the raft and buried forever. Regardless of how Tony Stark would feel about that. He thinks that the pro registration cause is  _ not  _ all about him. For all of Tony’s absolute faith that  _ Steve  _ was the reason the Avengers worked as well as they did, he seems to have completely discounted his own involvement. 

Overestimating himself in every way he shouldn't, underestimating himself in every way he could; It was all so very Tony. Like an age old repetition of an Avenger always  _ always  _ reaching the end of their rope - and the rest of them paying attention far  _ far  _ too late for it to make any difference. 

How long had this been going on? He doesn't want to know. If he did, then maybe every unsavoury thing he'd ever thought about Tony over the last decade or so of their friendship would be proven true. Steve is not  _ such _ a masochist. 

He turns around to walk away, and Tony reaches for him  _ wild.  _

"We're not done yet," he says, as though he could actually  _ fix _ this.

Steve had lost Tony. But this machine - he was hardly Tony, so it's not like he missed Steve. 

Beyond the anger, Steve feels the despicable  _ pity.  _ Tony would hate it, but then again, the time when Tony had been the best and brightest of them all was clearly long forgotten history.

He easily grabs the flying fist, twisting it behind Tony's back. He arrests the other arm by locking it in place with his own with a hand around Tony's chest, lifting him clear off his feet. There is no grace in Tony's movements. None of the usual devastating elegance. Just boiled over broken anger. Holding Tony down like this feels...  _ intimate _ . They’d done this before, he and Tony- If they were on the training mats, he'd throw Tony to the floor and poke him under his ribs until Tony giggled, because he had always been adorably  _ ticklish _ , and gave. Tony would smile at him then, with eyes a little too blown, and just a little too dark - to make it all uncomfortably sensuous, and fondly run his long fingers through Steve's hair. It would feel like home. 

Steve keeps losing his home. 

Now, he is strangely tempted to wrap the arm around Tony's chest around his throat instead. Facing away from Steve, he wouldn't have to look into Tony's eyes as his body struggled and then eventually stilled. He wouldn't have to look at Tony's face as his mouth parted in the perfect final quip. Tony would not die without having the last say. He was way too proud, way too arrogant, way too  _ important _ , to not have an immortalized last phrase. 

Steve wonders if it will be something clever, something wise. He doubts it. Tony's last words would be crafted to destroy. Just like everything else he did. The perfect architect of destruction. An angel of death. 

Steve wondered why even the  _ thought  _ of not loving him any longer  _ still  _ felt like blasphemy. 

He throws Tony away from him, his touch burns. 

Tony rolls the way Steve taught him, and comes to a still in the middle of the hall. Where the two of them had curled up and watched movies and read books together - too many nights to count. 

Its a queer sense of Deja Vu. Another hotel - another breakdown, a burning building - and Tony crying. 

Steve walking away. 

He walks away.

This time he doesn't bother punching the door. 

There is no door left to punch. 


End file.
